Photo: Sasha Chepelin at the World Cup Final Meeting 2017
Like Hector, my excitement for the upcoming TioMila relay is building. Having recently moved club and location to Halden, this feeling is ever more noticeable. I'm now part of a club which has quite the record of orienteering relay success. Simply glancing into the Halden SK's central clubhut reveals a trove of mementos earned from consistent success at the big orienteering relays across their entire histories. But with these big overnight relays comes a very different style of orienteering.
Halden's news item welcoming Sasha.
"A different style of orienteering"?
As with any relay, you are running for a team, and safe orienteering should prevail. The added bonus of TioMila and Jukola are the sizes of the teams. There are no other orienteering races where there are so many team mates who are directly-dependent on the outcome of your run. The teams at TiomIla are 5 and 10 runners; at Jukola it's 4 and 7. There's nothing else where so many others share the result of an individual run (save of course for 25manna) and the significance is magnified by how the two big relays are seen by clubs. In fact, factoring in this significance to the number of participants per team, the numbers and qualities of these teams, the months of preparation put in as Hector described, and the resultant pride associated with winning makes it fair to say that these relays are the grand prizes of orienteering.
Safe orienteering means just that. You will see packs forming like never before. You will see runners waiting for these packs at controls. You will see some often-astonishingly simplified routechoices reflecting on the necessary need to minimise risk. And yet, you will still see some painfully huge mistakes as pressure takes over, no less this year where the terrain is set to be quite complex. You can imagine how it must feel to lose minutes and places in one of these relays, especially if you're in a highly competitive first team.
Last year I had such an experience at Jukola, losing six minutes on a relatively short, straightforward leg. I was sleep deprived; another quality associated with the overnight men's races (it's another story why there is still a old-fashioned difference leg-length/time of day between the women's and men's races, but hopefully this can be modernised soon.) I allowed pressure from the team's high targets and all those eyes watching me through my GPS seep in (you can see it on the GPS for last year's Jukola - I am bib 22, “TuMe” to the orienteering world, and my 3-4 is not pretty watching). It's something which happens to everyone, and yet it's so avoidable with the right mindset.
It's important to remember that the heroes coming out of these relays are the ones who complete their legs with minimal mistakes, unless of course you're the anchor runner winning that final sprint. The heroes are the ones who do their jobs, who form and stick to packs, who set up a good race for the upcoming leg, and eventually those who bring it home, leaving every joule of energy in the closing few, often fast controls, preferably ahead of whichever teams are in close proximity. They're the ones who check their codes, who double check their codes, who hesitate for 5 seconds instead of binning 5 minutes, and who have the flexibility and discipline to change their plans, or even wait, in order to stay with a pack instead of seeking self pride going on a long leg alone in the dark. They're the team runners who are out for a maximum overall success; and they're the selfless idols that their team and club adore.
TioMila is now just a week away and clubs will be making their final decisions regarding leg order and tactics. And although runners will be prioritising their final technical and physical preparations, it's often the psychological preparations with relay race-specific strategies that pay off the most.